David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Luisa feels a flare of territorial jealousy. “What are you doing here?”

“Even editors eat. I’ve come here every morning since my wife’s … y’ know. Waffles I can make in the toaster but …” His gesture at his platter of pork chops implies, Need I say more?

“I never saw you in here once.”

“That’s ‘cause he leaves,” says Bart, performing three tasks at once, “an hour before you arrive. Usual, Luisa?”

“Please. How come you never told me, Bart?”

“I don’t talk about your comings and goings to no one else either.”

“First one into the office”—Dom Grelsch folds the newspaper—”last one out at night. Editor’s lot. I wanted a word with you, Luisa.”

“I have a distinct memory of having been fired.”

“Can it, willya? I want to say why—how—I’m not resigning over how Ogilvy crapped on you. And since my confessions are rolling out, I knew you were in for the ax since last Friday.”

“Nice of you to let me know beforehand.”

The editor lowers his voice. “You know about my wife’s leukemia. Our insurance situation?”

Luisa decides to grant him a nod.

Grelsch steels himself. “Last week, during the takeover negotiations … it was intimated, if I stayed on at Spyglass and agreed I’d never heard … of a certain report, strings could be pulled at my insurers.”

Luisa maintains her composure. “You trust these people to keep their word?”

“On Sunday morning my claims man, Arnold Frum, phones. Apologies for disturbing us, blah-blah, but he thought we’d want to know Blue Shield reversed their decision and will be handling all my wife’s medical bills. A reimbursement check for past payments is in the mail. We even get to keep our house. I’m not proud of myself, but I won’t be ashamed for putting my family ahead of the truth.”

“The truth is radiation raining on Buenas Yerbas.”

“We all make choices about levels of risk. If I can protect my wife in return for playing a bit part in the chance of an accident at Swannekke, well, I’ll have to live with that. I sure as hell wish you’d think a little more about the risk you’re exposing your self to by taking these people on.”

Luisa’s memory of sinking under water returns to haunt her, and her heart lurches. Bart places a cup of coffee in front of her.

Grelsch slips a typewritten page over the counter. It contains two columns of seven names per column. “Guess what this list is.” Two names jump out: Lloyd Hooks and William Wiley.

“Board members of Trans Vision Inc.?”

Grelsch nods. “Almost. Board membership is a matter of public knowledge. This is a list of unlisted corporate advisers who receive money sourced in Trans Vision Inc. The circled names should interest you. Look. Hooks and Wiley. Lazy, damning, just plain greedy.”

Luisa pockets the list. “I should thank you for this.”

“Nussbaum the Foul did the digging. One last thing. Fran Peacock, at the Western Messenger , you know her?”

“Just to say hi at superficial media parties.”

“Fran and me go back a ways. I dropped by her office last night, mentioned your story’s salient points. I was noncommittal, but once you’ve got battleworthy evidence she’d like to say more than just hi.”

“Is this in the spirit of your understanding with Trans Vision Inc.?”

Grelsch stands up and folds his newspaper. “They never said I couldn’t share my contacts.”

58

Jerry Nussbaum returns the car keys to Luisa. “Dear God in Heaven, let me be reincarnated as your mother’s sports car. I don’t care which one. That’s the last of the boxes?”

“Yep,” says Luisa, “and thanks.”

Nussbaum shrugs like a modest maestro. “The place’ll sure feel empty without a real woman to crack chauvinist jokes on. Nance is actually a man after so many decades in a newsroom.”

Nancy O’Hagan thumps her jammed typewriter and gives Nussbaum the finger.

“Yeah, like”—Roland Jakes surveys Luisa’s empty desk, glumly—”I still don’t believe how, y’ know, the new guys’d give you the high jump but keep on a mollusk like Nussbaum.”

Nancy O’Hagan hisses, cobralike, “How can Grelsch” —she jabs her cigar at his office—”just roll over waving his feet in the air and let KPO stiff you like that?”

“Wish me luck.”

“Luck?” Jakes scoffs. “You don’t need luck. Don’t know why you stayed with this dead shark for so long. The seventies is gonna see satire’s dying gasp. It’s true what Lehrer said. A world that’ll award Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize throws us all out of a job.”

“Oh,” Nussbaum remembers, “I came back via the mailroom. Something for you.” He hands Luisa a padded khaki envelope. She doesn’t recognize the crabbed, looping script. She slits open the envelope. Inside is a safety-deposit key, wrapped in a short note. Luisa’s expression intensifies as her eyes move down the note. She double-checks the label on the key. “Third Bank of California, Ninth Street. Where’s that?”

“Downtown,” answers O’Hagan, “where Ninth crosses Flanders Boulevard.”

“Catch you all next time.” Luisa is going. “It’s a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”

59

Waiting for the lights to change, Luisa glances once more at Sixsmith’s letter to triple-check she hasn’t missed anything. It was written in a hurried script.

B.Y. International Airport,

3rd—ix—1975

Dear Miss Rey ,

Forgive this scribbled note. I have been warned by a well-wisher at Seaboard I am in imminent danger of my life. Exposing the HYDRA-Zero’s defects calls for excellent health, so I will act on this tip-off. I will be in touch with you as soon as I can from Cambridge or via the IAEA. In the meantime, I have taken the liberty of depositing my report on Swannekke B in a strongbox at the Third Bank of California on Ninth Street. You will need it should anything happen to me .

Be careful .

In haste,

R.S .

Angry horns blast as Luisa fumbles with the unfamiliar transmission. After Thirteenth Street the city loses its moneyed Pacific character. Carob trees, watered by the city, give way to buckled streetlights. Joggers do not pant down these side streets. The neighborhood could be from any manufacturing zone in any industrial belt. Bums doze on benches, weeds crack the sidewalk, skins get darker block by block, flyers cover barricaded doors, graffiti spreads across every surface below the height of a teenager holding a spray can. The garbage collectors are on strike, again, and mounds of rubbish putrefy in the sun. Pawnshops, nameless laundromats, and grocers scratch a lean living from threadbare pockets. After more blocks and streetlights, the shops give way to anonymous manufacturing firms and housing projects. Luisa has never even driven through this district and feels unsettled by the unknowability of cities. Was Sixsmith’s logic to hide his report and then hide the hiding place? She comes to Flanders Boulevard and sees the Third Bank of California dead ahead, with a customers’ parking lot around the side. Luisa doesn’t notice the battered black Chevy parked across the street.

60

Fay Li, in visor sunglasses and a sunhat, checks her watch against the bank’s clock. The air-conditioning is losing its battle against the midmorning heat. She dabs perspiration from her face and forearms with a handkerchief, fans herself, and assesses recent developments. Joe Napier, you look dumb but you’re deep-down smart, smart enough to know when to bow out . Luisa Rey should be here any time now, if Bill Smoke was on the money. Bill Smoke, you look smart but you’re deep-down dumb, and your men aren’t as loyal as you think. Because you don’t do it for the money, you forgot how easily lesser mortals can be bought .